know of one highly talented and delicately sensitive woman who abruptly terminated a liaison on finding, at the first act of sexual intercourse, that the special seminal odour of the man was intolerably unpleasant to her ... It may be said in general that the odour of semen is exciting and stimulating to women and unpleasant, even nauseating to men. For a woman, the odour of the beloved man’s semen is delightful and excites her anew; but that of an unloved mate fills her with loathing.
Never make love with goblins
Fang Nei Chi (Records of the Bedchamber), Sui Dynasty (AD 590–618)
If a person has an unbalanced sex life, his sexual desire will increase. Devils and goblins will take advantage of this condition. They assume human shape and have sexual intercourse with such a person. They are much more skilled in this art than human beings, so much so that their victim becomes completely enamoured of the ghostly lover. Those people will keep the relation secret and will not speak about its delights. In the end they succumb alone, without anyone being the wiser.
The after-effects of copulation with an incubus can be cured by the following method: the man should copulate all day and night without ejaculating, then after seven days the disease will be cured. When his body is so fatigued that he cannot continue the act, the man should let his penis rest in the woman’s vagina and he will benefit all the same. If this disease is not treated as indicated here, the victim will die in a few years.
If one wishes a proof of the existence of incubi, one has but to repair alone to a marsh place far away in the mountains, in spring or autumn. One should stay there in a condition of complete tranquillity, staring into space and concentrating one’s thoughts on sexual intercourse. After three days and three nights, the body will suddenly become alternately cold and hot, the heart will be troubled and the vision blurred.
Then, a man engaging in this experiment will meet a woman, and a woman a man. During sexual intercourse with such an incubus one will experience a pleasure that is greater than ever felt while copulating with an ordinary human being. But at the same time one will become subject to this disease which is difficult to cure.
Evil women can contain iron
Albertus Magnus, De Secretis Mulierum (The Secrets of Women) (c. 1478)
O my companions you should be aware that although certain women do not know the secret cause of what I shall describe, many women are familiar with the effect, and many evils result from this. For when men have sexual intercourse with these women it sometimes happens that they suffer a large wound and a serious infection of the penis because of iron that has been placed in the vagina, for some women or harlots are instructed in this and other ill deeds.
Post-climax calamities
Havelock Ellis, Psychology of Sex: a manual for students (1933)
So profound is the organic convulsion involved by the process of detumescence that serious effects have sometimes followed coitus. Especially in men, not only death itself, but numerous disorders and accidents have been known to follow immediately after coitus, these results being mainly due to the vascular and muscular excitement involved by the process of detumescence.
Fainting, vomiting, involuntary urination and defecation have been noted as occurring in young men after first coitus. Epilepsy has been not infrequently recorded. Lesions of various organs, even rupture of the spleen, have sometimes taken place.
In men of mature age the arteries have at times been unable to resist the high blood pressure and cerebral haemorrhage with paralysis has occurred. In elderly men the excitement of intercourse with young wives or with prostitutes has sometimes caused death. Such results are, however, exceptional. They tend to occur in persons who are abnormally sensitive or who have imprudently transgressed the obvious rules of sexual hygiene.
Sex during the monthlies causes ...
The Treasury of Natural Secrets (anon., Italy, 16th century)
Physical weakness
Ten years’ premature ageing
Simple-mindedness
Loss of libido
Aches and pains in stomach, feet, eyes, brain, head
Ringing in ears
High fevers
Tremors
Weak nerves
Poor eyesight
Baldness
Backaches
Kidney and bladder pains
Bad breath
Foul body odour
Just put the Hoover down
Dr Alex Comfort, The Joy of Sex (1972)
Never fool around sexually with a vacuum cleaner.
In archaeology, as in life, if you want to find sex books, look in the son’s room.
The first lovemaking guides in human history may well be in the form of 4,000-year-old cave paintings found in countries such as France, Peru and Japan, showing women or couples in various positions, naked or wearing strange headgear. But without any words to accompany the pictures, we simply don’t know: they could have been educational, religious or ceremonial, or simply prototypes of readers’ wives. The earliest actual written sex books we have were only discovered in 1973. They date from around 2,400 years ago and were hidden in a Chinese family tomb, in the section where the son was interred. The books were greatest-hits compilations of Chinese wisdom that had already been around for a century. The questions they raised have proved extremely persistent – if you read a modern sex manual, glossy magazine or newspaper advice column, they will still be there.
If the advice these ancient books contain were written in the form of modern magazine coverlines, it would read:
FOUR SEASONS OF SEX:
AND WHY AUTUMN IS HOT, HOT, HOT
Your 100 thrusts to happiness
Wild new positions: tiger roving, gibbon
grabbing ... and fish gobbling
Sexplanation: read your partner’s writhing
From your wrists to your peaks – the ultimate
in-the-mood massage
Aphrodisiacs to keep you up all night!
